County to announce partners in pharmacy discount card program

Published: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 6:24 p.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 6:24 p.m.

A company offering free discount prescription cards and Marion County government will formally announce their new partnership Friday as part of a program to help uninsured and underinsured residents get discounts for medicines.

Facts

Announcing the plan

What: Press conference on the new, free prescription discount program offered by Marion County and Coast2CoastRx.

Who: County commissioners Kathy Bryant and Carl Zalak and a representative from Coast2CoastRx.

Financial Marketing Concepts (FMC), owners of the Coast2Coast Rx Card program, and the county will launch the program during a press conference. The goal is to bring attention to the program, which touts average savings of 60 percent off prescription drug prices.

The Coast2Coast Rx cards will be given away at most participating pharmacies, government offices, libraries and county health facilities.

“Anytime we can provide a service …that is going to be beneficial (to our residents). We want to do that,” County Commissioner Kathy Bryant said.

The company will give the county $1.25 for each prescription that pharmacists fill using the card.

Although it’s difficult to predict how often the cards will be used, FMC’s marketing officer, Martin Dettelbach, estimates Marion County residents will use the card between 2,000 and 4,000 times per month during the program’s first year. If that prediction is accurate, it will mean between $30,000 and $60,000 for the county.

Dettelbach said that money is taken from the administrative fee Coast2Coast charges participating pharmacies in return for getting customers into their businesses.

Dettelbach said Coast2Coast can afford to give the cards away for free because of two driving factors in the perspiration drug market: the price of medicines are significantly marked up, and pharmacies are competitive in trying to get customers into their stores where they buy medicines, but also other household items.

Pharmacies are willing to accept the cards and give customers discounts, and Coast2Coast a modest stipend, because those businesses make a sale and hopefully get a loyal customer out of the deal. In turn, the pharmacy hopes those customers will make their store a destination in the future for a whole host of purchases.

The card is honored by all chain pharmacies and many independent pharmacies, Dettelbach said.

“It’s sort of like peer pressure,” Dettelbach said of pharmacy motivation to accept the cards. “They don’t want to be left out. They know the value of getting foot traffic.”

The cards can be used by anyone, but it’s targeted mostly toward those who do not have health insurance or those who have high insurance deductibles.

Insurance prescription plans will be more economical for customers to use in at about 95 percent of the time, but for people without insurance or those insured who need medicines not on their plans, Coast2Coast helps to fill the breach, Dettelbach said.

Marion will be the 14th Florida county to join in a partnership with Coast2Coast. Others are Baker, Charlotte, Collier, Dixie, Hardee, Hernando, Highlands, Lee, Polk, Putnam, Sarasota. It has other such partnerships in at least eight other states, according to the company’s website.

Hernando County has a population of about 172,000. A similar program began there in 2011, and the card is now used about 3,000 times per month, Dettelbach said.

In Sarasota, with a population of about 380,000, the card is used between 5,000 and 7,000 times a month. The program was started there three years ago.

County Commissioner Carl Zalak, who will be at the press conference Friday to kick off the program, said the county doesn’t yet know what it will do with its share of the money.

Other than keeping track of the number of times the card is used, Dettelbach said, no patient data is maintained by Coast2Coast. He said the company doesn’t try to contact patients in hopes of selling other products or services, nor does it sell patient information to other healthcare companies.

Dettelbach said that creating partnerships with counties and distributing the cards at government offices allows instant access to residents who can best benefit from the program.

Coast2Coast is also expanding its program by working with healthcare providers to also accept the cards for discounts for dental, vision and hearing services, lab and imaging tests and diabetes supplies.

The company markets the cards, so there is little work for local governments to do, Dettelbach said.

That was another feature that got Zalak to lend his support to the program.

“It’s a great card (but) marketing is tough and we’re not in the marketing business,” he said.

Marion County previously had a partnership with another prescription card company, but Bryant this one offers more services by providing all the administrative and marketing work and giving the county a royalty for each filled prescription — something she said the previous card company didn’t do.

“Hopefully we’ll be able to have more citizens who will be able to benefit from this,” she said. “It’s a win/win for everybody.”

Reach Fred Hiers at fred.hiers@starbanner.com and 352-867-4157.

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